“Hurry up. Half the recipients means half the time. I’m counting, Hemingway,” the Watchman said as he let me into the ward. Obviously they had all been informed of my pen-related infraction.

“Yes, sir.” I refused to make eye contact—that was my big-man swipe at his authority. Just another small gesture, and yet it pushed fear into my muscles, and I scurried past him. Like a mouse.

More than half the doors had yellow papers tacked on them, the color of caution. I read the page on door one: resident has been temporarily relocated. Door two was the same, as were the rest. Resident temporarily relocated. Temporarily—maybe they were in the Correction Room? No, they wouldn’t give us the comfort of being anything but alone in that space, so they couldn’t all be there at once. Were they all being force-fed? My stomach turned.

I pushed a tray of powdered eggs through the first door without a yellow sign and was shocked by a bright sliver of light. I put my face to the hole instead of the food and looked in.

This was Missy’s room. Her note came to my mind easily: Junior—Lac des Arbres—don’t date my sister while I’m gone! She must have been beautiful at one time; she was still haunted by it around her big eyes, beauty clinging to her cheekbones. She was lying on her cot, staring up at the ceiling. She didn’t blink for so long that I was becoming convinced she was a corpse until I caught her halting breathing under the blue scrubs that pooled around her bones.

I tried to push my lips into the slot, to focus the sound, “Missy!”

I moved my head so I could see her. Nothing. I tried again.

“Missy, are you okay?”

I glanced back at the door to see if the Watchman was on his way down the hall to grab me by the scruff of my neck. No movement.

One last time: “Missy, can you hear me?”

She moved her head slightly to the left without unsticking her eyes from where they were fixed, and then, slowly, as if she were operating in a different physical realm, she rolled them to meet mine. The corners of her lips twitched and then pulled back as if caught by fishhooks. She showed me all her teeth, half of them crooked and brown, in a ghastly smile. Saliva slipped out and down her chin. She was not going to talk to me. I wasn’t sure she could if she wanted to. I sat in her stare, spit glistening on her face, for a full minute, waiting.

Maybe, in a way, she had also been relocated. I wasn’t sure if it was temporary or not. She rolled her eyes back to the ceiling and then her head, the smile still carved into her thin face.

I fed the tray through, let the hatch drop, and made my way to the next door. Nineteen left. Nineteen zombies, lying on their beds, laughing to themselves while sitting on the steel toilets or rocking back and forth with big, stupid smiles plastered on their mugs. Not one of them had words. Not one of them had sense. All they had was whatever was making them so jovial. One old man was crying from it, laughing as he wiped the tears from his wrinkles, then regarding them on his fingers as if they were the most precious jewels. He was Henry (Sam, Travis, May—move on without me. I can do this knowing you’re moving…keep moving.—Dad) and he was unreachable.